


Liturgy

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s11e14 The Vessel, Headspace, M/M, Prayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of Delphine, light of God shining from under her skin as alarms blare around them. Power spills from her pores, flooding everything in white, and then the dream twists and Sam is activating the banishing sigil. The pressure forcing Dean against the wall disappears as Lucifer is expelled from the bunker with a sound he hasn’t heard in years, with the beating of wings.</p><p>It keeps shifting, back and forth, back and forth, two versions of loss separated by a few seconds and an entire lifetime, and all he can do is watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liturgy

**Author's Note:**

> listen i would never finish a damn thing if it weren't for [cecilia](http://femmechester.tumblr.com/) so if you wind up sad about peanut butter like i am you can direct all complaints to her

They stop to get groceries on the way back to the bunker. Dean doesn’t remotely feel like cooking, but it’s something to do. It’ll keep them from having to go back there for a little longer, keep him from having to walk through those silent halls, from having to make meals for his ever-shrinking family.

Dean hates this -- that his home, his safe haven, has become something else. That it’s become a reminder of things lost rather than found.

So they go to the store. Sam wanders off while Dean is browsing the aisles, taking too long picking out a particular brand of coffee, spending too many minutes looking at all the different types of peanut butter. He’s still agonizing over creamy versus crunchy when Sam returns juggling fruits and vegetables, eggs and butter, milk and juice. He puts everything carefully in the cart and then stands in silence while Dean tries and fails to make what he knows, objectively, should not be a difficult decision.

It’s just that he doesn’t know what Cas preferred on his PB&J, and he can’t stop thinking that maybe he missed his chance to ask.

“Creamy,” Sam says, as if on cue. He passes over the Jif and the Skippy and even the organic no-preservatives-added crap and grabs a jar of the cheapest stuff they have. “He doesn’t understand brands,” Sam adds. “Says they all taste the same, anyway.” He shrugs.

“Right,” Dean says, like he knows. He takes the jar from Sam and adds it to the cart, and then he’s all out of reasons to delay going to the checkout.

From there, it’s a short trip back to the bunker. They take longer than they need to putting the groceries away, and when they finish, Sam passes Dean a bowl and a knife.

He says, “We better get started.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and slices open his own hand to help ward their home against Lucifer.

He tries not to think about the fact that in the process, he’s also shutting out one of the last living people in the whole goddamn world he still considers family.

He smears his blood on the walls. He paints it into sigils he hoped he’d never have to use again, symbols whose shapes he wishes he’d never had to learn.

But he did have to learn them, and now he can’t afford to forget. He forces himself to keep moving even though every floorboard that creaks under his feet sends him right back to that sub. He can’t forget that, either -- the creaking of metal, the stale air, the walls surrounding him on all sides and boxing him in. Forcing him to stay, even though he couldn’t do anything. Even though he was nothing more than a witness.

He wonders if that’s all he’s going to be here, too. If all of this is already written, if he’s just playing out someone else’s history. The floorboards are creaking under his feet and he can’t shake the feeling that any second now, the door will burst open and water will come rushing in, swift and inescapable.

By the time they finish putting up the warding and bandaging their wounds, Dean is too exhausted to do anything else. He collapses into bed without bothering to shuck off his clothes and does his best to blame it on the blood loss.

His last coherent thought comes out more as a desperate plea: _Maybe sleeping on it will make it better._

His subconscious doesn’t seem to be on board with the plan, though. He dreams of Delphine, light of God shining from under her skin as alarms blare around them. Power spills from her pores, flooding everything in white, and then the dream twists and Sam is activating the banishing sigil. The pressure forcing Dean against the wall disappears as Lucifer is expelled from the bunker with a sound he hasn’t heard in years, with the beating of wings.

It keeps shifting, back and forth, back and forth, two versions of loss separated by a few seconds and an entire lifetime, and all he can do is watch.

As it turns out, sleeping on it doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse. It makes it real. Dean wakes up and flicks on the light, and his eyes are immediately drawn to the stolen clothes crumpled in a heap in the corner.

He knows, in that moment, with a finality like the fate he’s been running from his entire life, that Delphine is still dead, along with everyone else on that godforsaken ship. Cas is still gone -- Cas is still out there somewhere, Lucifer wearing him like a stolen uniform.

 _He has to have been stolen,_ Dean thinks as he forces himself up and out of bed. _Cas wouldn’t have said yes. There’s no way._

Problem is, he can hear his own stubborn petulance even as he thinks the words to himself. He can tell exactly how disingenuous his denial is. After all, he still carries the memory of that alternate history with him, that version of 2014 that smelled of new growth pasted over stagnant water and slow decay. Sometimes he half expects to look into the mirror and find that other version of himself staring back at him, wearing that look of callous apathy he had traded his quiet desperation for somewhere along the line.

He knows exactly how hard it can be to say no. Knows exactly how much it can cost.

He also knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the cost of saying yes to the goddamn _devil_ is always, _always_ too high.

He doesn’t know what the fuck else he’s supposed to do, so he lets his legs carry him to the kitchen. He figures he may as well make himself breakfast, so he turns on the broiler and tosses some eggs on the stove. He grabs a couple of slices of bread and sticks them on a sheet in the oven, and while he waits for it to toast, he makes the mistake of taking a second to stand still.

He leans with his hands on the counter, eyes closed, head hanging so his chin is nearly pressed against his chest. Before he can stop himself, he prays, _Cas, what the fuck were you thinking?_

By the time he takes a deep breath and pushes himself back to standing, he’s scorched the shit out of the toast and the eggs are stuck to the pan. He takes another deep breath and suppresses the urge to break something. He throws the blackened bread into the trash, slams the frying pan into the sink, and goes to the fridge.

There’s water in there, of course, plus the juice and milk that Sam grabbed, and shoved into a cupboard somewhere are several bags of coffee grounds in flavors Dean picked out specifically. Any one of those would be a great pre-9:00 a.m. option, but he grabs a beer instead.

He knows it’s not a great choice, but he watched helplessly as dozens of people died. He watched helplessly as Lucifer mocked him while wearing his best friend’s face. Neither of those things is even a full twenty-four hours behind him yet, and if that isn’t too much for one person to deal with in a day, if that isn’t too many goodbyes to run through in a single afternoon, he doesn’t know what is. Frankly, he’s surprised he waited this long to get started on saying goodbye to sobriety. Fuck sobriety, actually. He’s earned this, whether he’s already eaten breakfast or not.

He downs half the bottle on his way to the table and sits in silence as he nurses the rest, feeling as though he’s being slowly suffocated by the smell of burned food. He stares at the bottle as beads of condensation form on the glass. He picks idly at the corner of the dampened label. He thinks about getting another.

 _Sam better be wrong,_ he prays. _You better not have fucking_ chosen _this._

He gets up and grabs another beer from the fridge before returning to his spot at the table.

Sam comes in when Dean is partway through the second bottle. He doesn’t say anything. He simply gives Dean this _look,_ this soft sort of gaze that’s not judgmental or disapproving but just...sad. Somehow, it manages to hurt worse than if he had commented.

When Sam does speak, it’s only to say, “I’m gonna make myself a sandwich. You want one?”

Dean says, “No.”

He stays where he is, sipping at his beer and trying to process everything. He listens to Sam fiddle around in the kitchen and tries to puzzle it all out, tries to figure out the answer to the impossible question of _why._

His thoughts are interrupted when Sam returns to the table, sitting across from him with his two sandwiches. He slides one across the table without comment as he starts eating his own.

Dean drags a hand over his face. He’s probably going to regret it, but he says, “Tell me again what he said.”

Sam tilts his head toward Dean’s sandwich. “After,” he says, voice muffled.

Dean sighs. “Swallow your damn food before you talk,” he says, but he pulls the plate in front of himself, looking down at it so he doesn’t give Sam the satisfaction of the victory. So he doesn’t have to see Sam looking sad and happy at the same time.

They eat in silence, but as soon as they’ve both taken their last bite, Sam clears his throat.

Dean desperately doesn’t want to have this conversation, even though they need to. Even though he’s the one who started this. Even though he desperately wants to figure out how to fix this.

The latter wins out. He says, voice barely above a whisper, “How could he possibly have chosen this?”

Sam sighs. “Listen,” he says, softly, “I know you don’t want it to be true, but if we’re gonna convince Cas to fight back, we need to understand why he said yes in the first place.”

Dean rests his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to help, Dean. He thinks Lucifer is the only one who can beat Amara.”

Dean scoffs. “There’s no way Cas is that stupid,” he says, trying and failing to keep his voice from rising. “We told him we’d find another way. Did he not trust us? Was he that sure we were gonna fail? Or did he just not care?”

“C’mon, man,” Sam says, pleading. “You know he didn’t do this out of malice. He suppressed Lucifer to stop him from killing me. To make sure he would be able to save _you._ You know he cares.”

Dean would really like to believe that as much as Sam seems to, but he’s having a hell of time trying to convince himself this isn’t the betrayal it feels like, that it isn’t just another thing on the long list of ways in which they’ve failed one another. “Oh, he _cares,_ ” Dean says, mocking. “That’s your argument? He cares about us, so it’s fine he said yes to _Lucifer?_ ” He curls his hands into fists, slams them down on the table. “How the hell could he think this would solve problems instead of just creating more of them?”

Sam doesn’t meet Dean’s anger with his own. He sits there with that same mournful look on his face. He spreads his arms, hands resting palms up on the table. “I don’t know what he was thinking, Dean,” he says, “but it’s Cas. You know he was just trying to help. He’s always trying to help.”

“What,” Dean snaps, “help by playing the hero? Because that worked out so well for him before!”

Sam sighs, infuriatingly calm. “You remember when I said yes?”

Dean goes still. “Of course I remember,” he says. “How could I fucking forget.”

“I can’t tell you why Cas did it,” Sam says, carefully, “but I can tell you why I did it.” Dean tries to interject, but Sam shakes his head, silencing him. “I was desperate. We all were. And I felt like, if I can do this. If I can save the world and all it costs is myself? If I die but everyone else gets to live? Then it’s worth it.”

“That’s,” Dean starts. His jaw works. “That’s not --”

“I know that,” Sam says quietly. “I mean it. I know. But does Cas? Hell, we haven’t been the best role models, and you said it yourself, he was…” He trails off, gesturing as he tries to remember what Dean said.

“Bad weird,” Dean says, after a long pause. He swallows hard. “But I thought he seemed --”

It hits him all at once, then, the reason Cas had looked better, lately. The reason he hadn’t seemed as weighed down by everything he’s accumulated along the way just like Dean and Sam have, all of the trauma and exhaustion and guilt. The reason he had looked like he’d finally managed to unpack some of his baggage.

Cas hadn’t been better; he been someone else entirely.

Dean realizes that for perhaps the first time since they’ve known each other, he had seen what Cas would look like if he were as confident and self assured as Lucifer, if he loved himself as much or more than he loves anything else.

He drains the rest of his beer. He sets the bottle back on the table, and then he stands and walks away. He ignores Sam’s concerned, “Dean?” as he leaves.

He goes to his room and spends a long time pacing back and forth. He tries to lie down, to relax, but he winds up shifting restlessly, thoughts looping endlessly on the same track.

All he can think is that Cas chose this. Cas _chose_ this and he did it because he...what? Thought it was the only way? Thought that’s how he could be the most useful? Thought that being _useful_ is all that matters when you’re staring down the end of the world? Thought that’s how little his life is worth, that it’s something to be so easily relinquished to the hands of the devil himself?

He wants to be angry. He _is_ angry, for a long time, and he wants to stay that way, but he can’t. Not while he’s replaying the last couple days in his mind. He stops being angry with Cas the second he thinks, _I only called Cas when I needed him._

As soon as they hit a dead end and needed his help, Dean called him like he was hiring him for contract labor. Like he’s some freelance savior they can only afford to call up every now and then. Cas has spent so much time away and he never called him just to say, _Hey, how about sticking around?_

He replays it again, not just the past few days but the past few months, the past...God, what is it now? Six years? Seven? He thinks of everything he could have done differently, everything he never said explicitly because he always assumed Cas knew it implicitly. He thinks of the difference between letting someone hang out at your home and watch Netflix to their heart’s content and telling them you want them to make your home into their home, too.

Dean stands in the middle of his room and stares up at the ceiling with his hands curled into fists in his hair. He prays, _Cas, I think I -- fuck. I think I fucked up._

He suddenly needs to be somewhere -- anywhere -- else. He curses himself internally as he grabs a change of clothes from his dresser, as he walks down the hall, as he opens the door to the bathrooms, as he starts up the shower.

He strips down and steps into the water he’s turned up so hot it hurts. He leans with his head down, his palms flat against the wall, and as his skin reddens under the spray, he starts, _Cas, please --_

That’s as far as he gets before he has to stop. He can feel his throat closing up, he can feel something stinging behind his eyes and in his sinuses that has nothing to do with the scalding heat of the shower.

It takes a few more hours and a few fingers of whiskey before he’s able to pick it back up. By then, he’s sitting slouched over in a chair in the library, elbows digging into the table. He doesn’t kneel or close his eyes. He sits there staring into his nearly empty glass.

 _Please come back,_ he prays. He scrubs a hand over his face. _I’d rather have you. I’d still rather have you. Please._

He doesn’t even care whether or not it’s selfish. He only cares whether or not it works.

Sam finds him just as he’s tossing back the rest of the whiskey.

“You okay?” he asks.

“No,” Dean says, his eyes and throat burning, his glass empty in his hand. He can’t stop his voice from catching as he asks, “What if he’s not strong enough?”

“Then we’ll figure out how to give him the push he needs,” Sam says. “We can do this, Dean. We’ll get him back.” He says it as though there isn’t a single doubt in his mind. As if that kind of belief comes naturally to him.

Dean clings to Sam’s hope and tries to make it his own. He musters every scrap of faith he can find within himself, he builds it upon a singular foundation: on every time one of his prayers had been answered, on every time Cas had returned to him.

He says, with as much conviction as he can muster, “Amen.”


End file.
